Road Test TV uncovered a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner that had been sitting since the ’70s — and the VIN tells a story most barn finds can’t match. Chassis 00015 makes it the pilot car for the entire 1970 model year, and it’s one of only 44 built with the 426 Hemi. Air Grabber hood, pistol-grip shifter, and a story decades in the making are all still intact under the dust.
Some barn finds turn up as a rusted shell of a car nobody can quite place. This one turned up as something closer to a birth certificate — a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner with a build sheet so specific that a handful of enthusiasts online immediately knew exactly what they were looking at before the video even explained it. Chassis number 00015. A 426 Hemi under the hood. And a title that isn’t just rare, it’s first-of-its-kind rare. What happens next to a car like this is the real question.
VIN 00015: What ‘Pilot Car’ Actually Means
Road Test TV’s find carries VIN 00015, identifying it as the very first 1970 Road Runner off the line — what the industry calls a pilot car, an early-production example built to work out assembly issues before the line ramped up to full volume. Pilot cars occupy a strange space in collector circles: not a prototype, not a regular production unit either, but the literal first attempt at building that year’s version of the car for real customers.
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One of Only 44 Hemi Road Runners Built for 1970
Add the 426 Hemi to that pilot-car status and the rarity compounds fast. Plymouth built 152 Road Runners with the Hemi for 1970 — split across 75 hardtops, 74 pillared coupes, and just three convertibles — making this pilot-numbered example a genuine rarity within an already vanishingly small production run. One commenter summed up the reaction plenty of viewers had watching the video: with barely 150 ever built and this one carrying the first VIN of the model year, there’s no realistic way to put a normal price on it.
The Options That Made a 1970 Hemi Road Runner Special
Beyond the engine itself, several viewers pointed to the details that separated a well-optioned 1970 Road Runner from a stripped-down base car — the Air Grabber hood with its vacuum-operated scoop, the pistol-grip shifter that became one of the most recognizable Mopar interior touches of the era, and the Tic-Toc-Tach mounted in the dash. One commenter clarified that the Air Grabber hood actually came as standard equipment on every 1970 Hemi Road Runner, with the 383 and 440 Six Barrel offered as the optional engine alternatives beneath it — a distinction that matters to anyone trying to verify this car’s originality against its build sheet.
What Decades of Storage Does to a Hemi Road Runner
The car’s current state — sitting since the 1970s, undriven and unrestored — means its 426 Hemi almost certainly needs a full teardown before it turns a wheel under its own power again. Rubber components perish, fuel systems gum up, and steel panels develop rust from the inside out during a storage span this long, all of which multiple commenters acknowledged when they called for a total restoration rather than a simple refresh. For a car this historically significant, though, most Mopar collectors would argue that’s a cost worth absorbing rather than a reason to walk away.
A Car That Triggers Real Memories, Not Just Spec-Sheet Trivia
The video’s comment section filled up fast with personal history rather than just technical praise — someone recalling riding in a Road Runner as a kid while a parent yelled at the driver to slow down, another remembering a Plum Crazy 1970 Hemi GTX with a four-speed that lived in their childhood neighborhood. That’s the pull a car like this has: it’s not just a rare VIN, it’s a trigger for an entire generation’s memories of what these cars actually meant on the street.
Why a Pilot Car Commands a Different Kind of Respect
Regular production Hemi Road Runners already sit near the top of the Mopar muscle car hierarchy in collector value. A documented pilot car adds a layer that has nothing to do with horsepower — it’s the automotive equivalent of an original manuscript versus a later printing, the specific vehicle Chrysler used to prove the 1970 Road Runner could actually be built before thousands of regular-production cars followed it down the line.
What Happens to a Find Like This Next
Whether this particular Hemi Road Runner ends up in a full frame-off restoration, a sympathetic mechanical refresh that preserves its barn-find patina, or simply changes hands to a collector with deeper resources, the car has already done the hard part: it survived decades of storage intact enough for its VIN, its engine, and its story to still be traceable. For a 1-of-44 pilot car, that alone puts it in a category most muscle cars never reach.
A Channel Built on Finding Cars That Can Prove Their Story
Road Test TV has built a niche around exactly this kind of discovery, tracking down cars with documentation strong enough to withstand scrutiny from a fan base that knows the difference between a genuine find and a story dressed up to sound better than it is. A pilot-car VIN paired with one of only 44 Hemi drivetrains built that year isn’t a claim that needs much dressing up — the numbers alone do the talking, and every enthusiast in the comment section clearly understood exactly what they were looking at.
The Hemi itself remains the single biggest driver of value in any conversation about this car. Rated at 425 horsepower from the factory — a figure most enthusiasts have long believed was conservative for insurance and marketing purposes — the 426 Street Hemi transformed the Road Runner from Plymouth’s budget-minded muscle car into a genuine performance flagship whenever a buyer checked that option box. Combining that engine with a pilot-build VIN means this particular car represents both ends of the spectrum Plymouth was chasing in 1970: mass-market affordability on one side, and its most serious performance hardware on the other, built into the very first car off the line. That combination of firsts is rare enough on its own; finding it preserved well enough after fifty-plus years to still be verifiable is rarer still. Whoever takes on the restoration will effectively be completing a job Plymouth’s own assembly line started fifty-plus years ago and never got to finish properly, given how the car ended up parked and forgotten instead of driven the way its Hemi clearly intended.
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Had a 70 model road runner 383
68-69
70
Awesome
Terry Williamson.
Jim Cook and I both had new 70 Road Runners.
Terry Williamson, and I was with you when you picked yours up at Gottenborg Chrysler-Plymouth.
Terry Williamson , yours = black with lace. Mine = bronze.
Nice
Who can let a car like that sit?
Love those mopars
THATS MY KIND MUSCLE CAR
Being a mopar guy all I can say is DAMN
Beautiful…
I’m looking for a 1968 GTX anybody know where I’ can fine one
Your car tell me.
David Floyd
Jesse Bredensteiner
A real hemi roadrunner
1 of 44, what a find.
Had a 68 loved it a loved driving as long as
What a Kool fine
my dad’s ’69
Rob Llewellyn
My dream car!
Bet it’ll bring 100k in that condition.
beautiful
Plum Crazy paint job!
Worth as much as someone with deep pockets is willing to pay for it. Cool barn find!
That’s curious
We keep seeing an awful lot of these “Barn Finds”
Nice one! :/
Wonderful find if I wasn’t in the middle of another project I shall be wishing I had that one that hemis a little Rich for my blood being all original one day I’ll make a tribute to that very car or at least the thought of doing that project is awesome